Pheidippides Translates to "Boogie Butts" in Dog-ese

Very sad. A dog that escaped his house to run a half-marathon 2 weeks ago has now died of a heart attack.

The noble sacrifice of Boogie Butts will not have been in vain, as he was able to carry the message to Athens that the mail man had been defeated. Rejoice! Woof conquer!

Morgan Territory and ANOTHER Bobcat

I don't know what it is with these bobcats but I'm starting to think these guys are following me around. Bobcat paranoia? I went out to Morgan Territory yesterday and twenty minutes in, came around a turn on the trail and startled this feline friend, who promptly ran so fast down the steep hillside that I watched to see if it would start tumbling. But of course not, it bounded gracefully over a log and hid in a bush.



M.T. is classic East Bay steep hill, oak scrub and pasture in the shadow of Mt. Diablo. It's very easy to see how well the cattle tracks mark the isoclines. Consequently instead of following the human trail ups and downs, to maintain constant elevation on the way back I followed the cattle tracks.

Of note, I partly went there to see the damage from the fires on Diablo in September, since it's on the southern aspect. Possibly due to the dark overcast yesterday, it wasn't nearly as obvious as it was from much more distant Rose Peak a few weeks ago.

Oat Hill Mine Trail

Images above from bermstyle.com and zovirl.com. Part of the growing Bay Area Ridge Trail. Excellent trail, and if you want to make a day of it, you can start in Calistoga and go all the way up to the top of Mt. St. Helena, probably comes to about a full marathon on an out-and-back. Boy is that ever some volcanic stuff up there; not surprising at the base of the not-long-extinct volcano (that flat top isn't an accident) but it still feels more like Oregon than California. Thanks again to the volcano and the remnants of Farallon Plate subduction for good soil in Napa Valley and the resulting healthy vines and coolest petrified forest in the world that no one knows about.

What Are the Odds of Getting Assaulted While Running?

For all trailrunners' worries about mountain lions and other critters, the scariest animal we're likely to meet is (drum roll) an ill-intentioned human - but how likely is that? Since in the U.S. we just set the clocks back an hour, after-work runs are going to be in the dark until March. So, Science Based Running tries to calculate the odds. The answer is we still don't know, because crime stats aren't collected that way. That said, violent crime in the U.S. is about as low as it's ever been.

Here are safety tips for running at night, and here's a mapping site that plots crimes by type over the last six months.

Bay Area Update: Point Reyes

From bucketlistjourney.net.

1. Running in Point Reyes is still awesome (unsurprising report of the year). I started at the Bayview trailhead, went over to Drake's Estero and did a bunch of other stuff, then despite telling myself no I don't need to go up to the highest point in the park, ended up on Mount Vision and Point Reyes Hill, because it was actually on the way back. Saw a badly gnawed deer shin in the middle of Muddy Hollow Trail at one point.

2. There are no redwoods in Point Reyes, although it didn't hurt the run any. That's because PR is entirely on the Pacific Plate side of the San Andreas Fault and the soil type changes noticeably. You can really see this along the reservoirs down on the Peninsula. That said, different soil didn't stop these trees below from growing (in Victoria, Australia) - it's only fair, because those Aussies' damn eucalpytuseses have damn near taken over coastal California at this point. Apparently sequoias have done pretty well in Europe too. There's even been a Nature paper on fundamental limits to tree growth.



The weekend on the trails was cut shrot by a plane flight to SoCal but this was redeemed by dinner at Richard Nixon's favorite Mexican restaurant in San Clemente and some tasty Armenian chicken at Zankou on Sunset, so not all was lost.

Government Aircraft in Low-Altitude High-Speed Risky Maneuvers Over San Diego

San Diegans: later this month the government is going to repeatedly fly big, expensive aircraft at high speeds and low altitudes in dangerous formations over your neighborhood. The government seems to have no concern for the safety of your property and family. Are you going to take this lying down?

What's more, these risky and unnecessary maneuvers are being done for defense, or for firefighting, or even as an aeronautics experiment to provide valuable data. No, these high-speed low-pass maneuvers are being done for - get this - entertainment.

Of course I'm talking about the Air Show, which fortunately was cancelled this year. Somehow that doesn't count as government wasting our money and risking our families and homes.

Want to have an air show? Great! Do it out over Imperial County somewhere. Don't risk so many private property owners' lives and homes.

Ohlone Wilderness, Bobcat Attack, Bay Area vs. San Diego

First of all, congrats on everyone who ran the Dick Collins 50k/trail marathon, my favorite race ever! Couldn't do it this year and wish I could've been there with you. List of ass-kickers here.


View of Mt. Diablo from within Ohlone Wilderness, from Summit Post. Rose Peak is higher than Diablo by a hair and it's actually the highest point in the Bay Area - but because it's so hard to get to and it's not prominent, all its thunder is stolen by Diablo, Hamilton, and Tam.
Today I did a niiiice one from the Ohlone Wilderness Trailhead in Sunol Preserve to Rose Peak. It had been a while since I'd been up there and I was embarrassed at having to ask hikers at one point which way the trail went! (After having run the Ohlone 50k 9 years ago.) Before I go back to SD, I will be getting up to Rose Peak from Del Valle too. Among the treats along the way on this gorgeous October Day in the north end of the Diablo Range: many turkeys, and the highlight, a bobcat chasing a ground squirrel, successfully. The poor guy struggled in its executioner's jaws for 30 seconds before giving up the ghost, during which time the bobcat stood stoically gazing forward, awaiting the inevitable. It was a big damn bobcat too; I actually reviewed videos of bobcats vs. mountain lions trotting (not full-out running) to make sure of what it was, since I couldn't get a clear view of the tail. In my search I encountered this fun video:



(BTW, you think this housecat is stupid? Try this one. Lichen has a higher IQ than him.) Oddly enough, doing an image search for Ohlone Wilderness, one of the first pics that came up was a mountain lion, not surprisingly. Here's a great article on mountain lions in the Bay Area, which mentions many places I've personally noticed evidence. Las Trampas is a good one. You can usually find the remains of kills down around Devil's Hole.

I've been around here for 3 weeks now, thanks to the kindness of Greg and Will who are letting my crash in their beautiful home, and it's brought some reflecting about San Diego vs. the Bay. I'll be honest and say that, like many Bay Area snobs, I haaaaated San Diego when I first moved there. At this point I like both places and sometimes I think it would be nice to be bi-metropolitan; after all I know one couple who spend the warm months in Vancouver BC and the winter months in San Diego (a way to cheat the world if ever there was one) but after all they're retired, and you can't really do that with a family, and my fate won't be in my own hands for a few more years. And I have to admit, during this visit up here, there are some things that are bugging me. Here's my own list:

	Things I Miss	Things I Don't Miss
Bay Area	wind, clear blue skies (no dust or humidity), fog rolling in, large stands of wild-growing chlorophyll higher than waist-level, everyone I talk to being really smart and accomplished, hashers who don't judge me for having a life outside of the hash	traffic, cold monsoons every February, poison oak, food prices, housing prices (and difficulty of finding at all; it's getting like New York), snobby artsy people who dress in annoying provocative fashion-forward ways and insist that you care, everyone I talk to trying to impress me by being really smart and accomplished
San Diego	real Mexican food, the microbrew scene, plentiful parking, no poison oak, canyon preserves right in the city, an ocean you can swim in without a wetsuit at least a couple months out of the year	hot summer days inland so you can't run more than a few miles from the coast for 5-6 months a year, no large preserves with trees near the city, the looming military presence, the power of developers and occult politics over protecting open space, drunk kids in PB

Of note: Bay Area traffic is noticeably worse than just a few years ago. 280 used to be a Sunday drive/nature trail type of freeway, but now many mornings it's actually slow. And it's only going to get worse. And San Diego people, please don't complain to me that San Diego does in fact have traffic and poison oak. Relative to the Bay Area, to a first approximation San Diego has neither.

Documentary: The NFL's Concussion Crisis

El Corte de Madera

From Jane Huber/bahiker After I finished up at the hospital yesterday I got up in them thar hills on the Peninsula, specifically El Corte de Madera Preserve. Originally I wanted to do Purisima but realized I hadn't spent much time in El C of M, and got the redwoods and forest and dark dirt trails that I needed. The run was an awesome combination of Methuselah, Giant Salamandar, Fir, and then some others that I don't remember. That Fir Trail has some nice little steep jaunts! I wish I could inhale that redwood-and-soil smell and never exhale it. But anyway, I bit off more than I could chew and it got dark on me while I was out there, and a nice ranger was waiting for me at the trailhead when I came back out onto Skyline near Skeggs Point. (Not sarcastic. She actually was very nice.) While I certainly do not recommend breaking park rules, I have to say getting that wind and fresh air and chlorophyll up there was absolutely worth it and the difference it made inside my skull was profound. It's great to be back in the Bay.

Practical point to park users: Skeggs Point (the little parking area on the east side of Skyline along the park) is a Caltrans lot so you can park there at any time, unlike the preserves' parking areas. But the rangers may assume (as they did in my case, correctly) that your car being there after dark means you're still out on the trail.

Bay Area, Here I Come (Again) (For a While)

French Trail, Redwood Preserve. The Platonic form of trails. Image credit alltrails.com.

Ah, the Bay...I'll be around for two months doing away rotations at Stanford and UCSF. During this time (besides working hard in my rotations of course, dear web-searching residency coordinator) I will be running on my favorite trails in the following places, in no particular order (which I'm posting to make you jealous, dear non-Bay-Area trail runner).

Mt. Tam and the Dipsea (duh!)

Some new trails in Point Reyes

Tilden, which has a way of surprising you with new trails every time you go up there
(unless your name is LJ and you know every square inch of the East Bay - hashers, you know what I mean)

French trail in Redwood

Mount Diablo, assuming they've put it out by now

Briones and the EBMUD territory there (damn, have to get a pass)

Morgan Territory

Some good Marin watershed

The inexplicably little-known La Purisima

Big Basin

Ohlone Wilderness and the almost Rocky-Mountain like south side of Mission Peak



Morgan Territory. Image credit pedalpushersonline.com.

Angeles Crest with Snow, and Pismo Dunes

1998 may finally have been the year my fate was sealed as a future Californian. It had been an El Niño year, so there was snow well into May in the Angeles. And on the same trip I ended up in SLO County - driving was faster than flying - and this Pennsylvania boy had never seen anything like the Pismo Dunes or Montana de Oro. The picture of Montana de Oro looks like a matte painting and the effect was not any different in person. Don't miss the critter crossing the path in that shot.

Seal Imitates Art

When I ran across this sad fellow on the beach in Malibu some years ago, for some reason I had the urge to drape a melting clock over him. I know it's a bit of a stretch but it reminded me quite strongly of Persistence. My taste in art can be morbid and for that I do apologize.

Autumn in Pennsylvania

These pictures were taken in State College and Cumru Township, Pennsylvania in the autumns of 1994 through 1996. There's no contest - this is the Pennsylvania season I miss most. Nothing beats running along country back roads in crisp air.

Jekyll Island, Georgia

I'm scanning in photos and here are some of Jekyll Island. Georgia's coastline is pretty deserted, undeservedly so. That said, you can't really swim in the freshwater around there, as these pictures will make clear. Do be advised that your blogger was young and stupid (even stupider than now) in the pictures where I'm tempting fate.

I think a better thought bubble could have been put on this picture. "Wait...is this guy stupid? This is too easy, something's wrong. I'm not going for this. This one must be diseased or something."

Yosemite Rim Fire Caused by Campfire

Fires of any kind, even from a gas-powered camp stove, should be made illegal in California's forests from April through October.

The investigation now says it was not caused by a grow operation, but rather a hunter who let a campfire get out of control. So this raises the question again: why do we allow campfires (or any flame) AT ALL in California forests during the summer? This is the biggest fire in the history of California, all so someone didn't have to endure the soul-crushing inconvenience of eating pre-made, uncooked food. From now on, take some Power Bars and leave our remaining forests intact.

It's also been announced that no charges will be pressed against the person that started the fire. There's no point calling for revenge and this seems to have been an honest mistake (although a really stupid one), but shouldn't there be a deterrent? This one individual certainly couldn't pay for the whole firefighting operation, but a severe penalty in cases of carelessness would make people think twice. And if no fire is allowed period, there's no room for interpretation.

Fires of any kind, even from a gas-powered camp stove, should be made illegal in California's forests from April through October.

Yosemite Rim Fire May Have Been Caused by Marijuana Growers

Story here, more video here.

It's not news that national forests in California are damaged by grow operations and this is the highest cost we've paid yet. If we legalize, these go away overnight. As do the profits of the cartels in Mexico.

They Pulled This Out of Delaware Bay

From Boing Boing

Hey. That's no good.

I guess nothing should surprise me after finding out that there are bull sharks in creeks in Minnesota. (Edit: turns out that was a hoax.)

Beers Most Implicated In Emergency Room Visits

Done at Johns Hopkins. They should've adjusted the list by per capita consumption, although I bet it still wouldn't change much.

Downtown San Diego Planning Survey - More Stadiums?

That would be a big "no", because we I don't think anyone wants our traffic more screwed up than it already is and parking downtown to be even worse - not to mention those new stadiums helping themslves to our tax dollars. The survey is here.

Mt. Laguna Burn Report

A good article with lots of photos at the OB Rag. In terms of forest damage, fortunately, not that bad. Thanks to Frank Gormlie for going up there and sharing this with the community.

Angeles Crest 100 2013

No I didn't run it. I thought about going up to pace but ended up not being able to leave San Diego that day due to other commitments (medicine sucks.) But I was very happy to run across this nice vid done by Chihping Fu, who I had met in the trail/ultra community when I was still up in SF. Super nice guy and glad to see him here. Enjoy! I should also add it seems like the post-race tradition is now to go to Din Tai Fung in Arcadia. Great, now when I hit that place one the way back from Angeles N.F. I'll feel guilty for not having just finished a 100-miler. Yeah, thanks guys! :)

Beware, as of this writing (9 August 2013) there is a fire burning in the northeastern part of Angeles N.F. (Lone Pine Canyon) that has caused some evacuations in Wrightwood, and may be changing this guy's plans for the weekend.

San Diego Cyclists Being Shot at by Loser Kids

San Diego cyclists are being targeted by jerks with a pellet gun. (From bikesd.org.) People have been shot at with pellets - the kind that can penetrate skin - in La Jolla, up on Mount Soledad, around Torrey Pines, and on Fiesta Island. This has happened over multiple days. Police are investigating. The report says that they were three teenagers driving a black Grand Am.

If you see them, GET THE PLATE NUMBER (always obvious in retrospect) and even better, get a picture, then call 911.

In My Opinion, Fennel Must Be Destroyed

Ceterum censeo...okay so maybe I'm not the great Roman senator and orator Cato (I have an extra N in my name) but you get the idea. The biggest foothold I see the highly-invasive non-native fennel gaining in Rose Canyon is out there at the west end, on the side (uphill) side of the canyon. If you see broken stalks out there that would be my handiwork. Chopping at this stuff was a lot more fun than it should have been. My sword ran with the blood of the fennel! That is, the stick I used now smells licorishy. I've pulled this stuff out before so I have no illusion that one such treatment will kill it, but repeated thrashings usually do the job.



If you're comfortable with your ability to identify this plant and you see more growing in open spaces, please feel free to join me in fennel genocide. (Fennecide?) And if you like it in salads, take some home! (I can't stand the stuff; plus it contains phytoestrogens, yikes!)

Why Doesn't the PAC-12 Want *Openly* For Profit Colleges in the League? Duh

Article from Sports Illustrated here. It's very strange that colleges are whining that Grand Canyon U. is doing this to make money. I guess all the Pac-12 schools have a loss every year from their football programs? No, they don't; they're massive money machines: and this is why in the large majority of U.S. states, the highest paid state employee is the football coach.

What's really going on here is a) ASU doesn't want to divide the college sports market in Phoenix, but they can't say that out loud; and b) the schools know that they're all running a business with the brand names of universities, and profiting from people's rabid allegiance from something they think of in tribal-colors terms rather than business terms. As soon as there's a for-profit school doing exactly the same thing, fans can't help but wonder if their own school isn't, as Steve Hsu perfectly described, "a tax-exempt sports-entertainment complex that is, for strange historical reasons, hosted by the higher education system". The article notes:

While it's true that non-profit universities reinvest their revenues from the major sports, they also rely heavily on outsiders' donations. Is it inherently more noble for Oregon to accept $68 million from mega-booster Phil Knight to build a new "Darth Vaderish Death Star" football complex than it is for Grand Canyon to spend its stockholder-generated capital on a "$300 million investment in state-of-the-art classrooms, laboratories, dormitories and athletic facilities?"

What I really want to see is Stanford twisting and turning to make an argument as to why a private school shouldn't be in the PAC-12. "But they're for-profit! They're for-profit!" Again, I don't think Stanford (or the rest) lose money on their sports programs. This is kind of like when one casino doesn't want another one starting down the road to compete with them, but they can't just come out and say that, so they somehow end up saying "2 casinos in this county would lead to immorality. But just one (us), that's okay." The talking-out-of-both-sides-of-their-mouth that goes on when people are defending their money, but can't be seen as defending money, is beyond hilarious and indeed, maybe into Orwellian territory!

And it bears repeating, big football schools are not notorious for being the most academically rigorous, although for what it's worth, there's no relationship in either direction between a school's football status and their academics (I ran the numbers myself). And lest you doubt that college football is, in fact, big business, then how about this piece showing that the many frustrating mysteries of the college football ranking system are all explained by one thing.

Cuyamaca in Winter

February 2013. I was there in regular running gear (shorts and running shoes and T-shirt). Very pretty and the cold was okay, in fact great! But it was right above freezing and running was just slippery and muddy and unpleasant. Short run that day. I went over to the bottom of Noble Canyon after this but it wasn't any better.

Canyon Cleanup Day 2013

(Cross posted to my blog the Lucky Atheist.)

I'd been meaning to post the pictures from the Canyon Cleanup back in April. A few of us came out from SDNA (thanks everyone!) and joined some other teams of people - if I remember, Qualcomm was well-represented - but the coolest thing was that Dorothy and Sara got to take a kayak out to get the trash along the water to complete the cleanup on the other side. This is Penasquitos Creek, which a bit further downstream opens up into the marsh at Torrey Pines State Beach. Fun day! Next one is 21 September 2013.

Severe greenery was in evidence
but the cleaner-uppers were not dissuaded.

Intrepid cleaner-uppers scour the other side of the river.

Sycamore Canyon/Santee/Scripps Ranch Valleys

These canyons are: a. the most beautiful springtime place I've ever seen in San Diego (pictures taken in March and April) and b. of questionable legality to access, possibly being part of Miramar MCAS. For that reason, I certainly didn't take these pictures, but rather a mysterious person who is not me, and who took them, after which miraculous event they magically appeared on this blog. If you run or ride a lot you probably know where this place is anyway. There are two sets, one in mid-day from the end of March, and one getting on toward dusk in early April. Restorative does not begin to describe the (much-needed) effect this green place had on me.

I'll start off with a coyote talking:

Finish up with a panoramic video from the top of a hill.